1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved manufacturing process and in particular to providing instructions to manufacturing operators. More specifically, the present invention provides a manufacturing process that allows for automatically delivering an appropriate level of instructions to a manufacturing operator on demand based on the manufacturing operator's level of activity and performance, the particular characteristics of the product being manufactured, and the particular production environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a manufacturing environment, a requisition for goods or services, described in terms of exchange of those goods or services for agreed compensation in a contractual form, is called an order. Customers place orders for products that must be manufactured once the order has been placed. For timely manufacturing and delivery of the ordered product, a significant amount of planning, preparation, and procurement procedures are involved in the production process. Accounting systems, planning systems, warehouse management systems, logistics systems, and numerous other systems, support the production planning process to ensure that the orders are capable of being fulfilled. These systems may determine whether orders can be fulfilled based on the buyer's account status, suppliers' inventory levels, manufacturer's own warehouse inventory, quantities on hand, assembly schedule availability, and tooling and personnel availability among other factors.
When an order is received from a customer, the manufacturing system breaks down the order into requisite materials. The term “material” used in the context of an order in this manner means the various components, supplies, accessories, and consumable items needed for making the ordered product. For example, for an order for a computer, the materials may include a specific motherboard, a processor of a certain specification, a chassis of certain dimensions, a power supply of certain wattage, and number of screws of a certain size to fasten the motherboard to the chassis. For each order, the manufacturing system generates one or more bills of materials (BOM), which is a listing of materials needed to complete the order.
In some manufacturing environments, products are produced that have a high degree of variability or configurability. One common approach to manufacturing a configurable product is to manually lookup a placement and/or configuration of each component in paper-based or electronic tables. In addition to the tables, a set of static manufacturing instructions may be provided to the manufacturing operator to provide basic guidelines on how to assemble the product. Manufacturing instructions may be provided by a work instruction system that comprises an authoring tool and a viewing tool. A user inputs appropriate instructions into the system, which are subsequently communicated to the operator on the manufacturing line via the viewing tool. The operator uses these instructions to assemble the product according to the instructions. As the quality of the manufacturing instructions can have a significant impact on the quality and cycle time of the products being assembled, a good manufacturing instructions system will provide consistently up-to-date and easily understood instructions.